Economy UAE announces largest-ever budget for 2025 By Chris Hamill-Stewart October 8, 2024, 3:36 PM Wam Capital expenditure by the government is expected to continue to rise during 2025 UAE to spend $19bn Infrastructure investment to continue Spending up 50% this year The UAE has approved its largest-ever national budget for the fiscal year 2025, with spending set to hit AED71.5 billion ($19.5 billion), after capital expenditure increased by nearly half in the early part of this year. The government expects to match the 2025 expenditure with AED71.5 billion in revenues over the same period. Social Development and Pensions represent 39 percent of the overall budget, or AED27.9 billion. Within this umbrella category, 15.3 percent of the total budget is allocated to public and higher education programmes, 8 percent to healthcare and community prevention services, another 8 percent to pensions, 5.2 percent to social affairs, and 2.5 percent to public services. The Government Affairs sector has been allocated AED25.5 billion, accounting for 35.7 percent of the total budget. The Infrastructure and Economic Affairs sector has been allocated AED2.6 billion, 3.6 percent of the total budget, while 4 percent, or AED2.9 billion, has been designated for the Financial Investments sector. Other federal expenditures have the remaining 17.7 percent of the budget, a total of AED12.6 billion. Capital expenditure by the UAE government increased by over 50 percent in the first half of the year and is expected to continue to rise through to the end of 2025 as the country progresses large-scale infrastructure projects. WamThe UAE cabinet. Spending was up 50 percent in 2024 Spending reached AED5.6 billion in the first quarter of 2024, rising sevenfold on a year-to-year basis, according to the latest figures from the Central Bank of the UAE. The increase in Q1 spending was tempered by a 17 percent decline in capex spending in the second quarter of the year, despite the AED2 billion pledged by the government to deal with damage to homes caused by April’s heavy flooding. Overall investment for the opening six months of this year remained up 50.7 percent on the same period last year, said Mariette Kas-Hanna, senior Mena country risk analyst at BMI, a Fitch Solutions company, who expected the upward trend to persist. New Expo City plan to drive Dubai’s economic growth Abu Dhabi to announce new 2045 strategy for GDP growth UAE non-oil growth weakens while Gulf neighbours improve “We believe that the large-scale infrastructure projects will continue to drive capex higher in H2 2024 and in 2025,” she said. Last October the UAE cabinet laid out the federal budget of AED192 billion ($52 billion) for the three-year period of 2024 to 2026. The Central Bank of the UAE revised its economic predictions for the Gulf state in September. GDP is predicted to rebound to 4 percent in 2024, from 3.6 percent last year, and push on to 6 percent in 2025, as per its quarterly economic review.